Linoleum
by Lint
Summary: Love doesn't always conquer all. Fr/X


Title: Linoleum   
Author: Lint   
Email: CrashDarby@aol.com   
Disclaimer: All Buffy folk belong to Joss, Mutant Enemy, and now UPN.   
Rating: PG-13  
Summary: Love doesn't always conquer all.   
  
***  
  
It's a long established myth that, the moment before you die, you can see your entire life flash before your eyes. I was never one to ever really sit down and think about it. It was just one of those things you'd hear every once in a awhile, when someone you knew, or someone somebody else knew, said it happened to them. When they almost crashed their car or hit some really bad turbulence in a plane. I'd like to state for the record that, while it can happen to someone else, it's not happening to me. The only thing I can see is the dust bunnies that have built up underneath my counters. I can hear the hum of the refrigerator and clock on the wall.   
  
Your mind thinks about the most arbitrary things at a time like this. I'm not praying to god, or saying I'm sorry to anyone I might have hurt in the past. Here I am with my insides draining all over my kitchen floor and I'm thinking about the time Willow and I ate too many cookies while watching Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. We both got really sick and took turns throwing up our sugar coated stomach lining. I would smile at the memory but even my facial muscles feel too heavy to move.   
  
I know I'm dying.   
  
I can hear each and every last second pounding away from the clock on the wall.   
  
Tick, tick, tick.   
  
You have this many more minutes to live Mr. Harris.   
  
Tick, tick, tick.   
  
I hope you've enjoyed your life.   
  
Tick, tick, tick.   
  
I hope you still think she was worth it.   
  
Tick, tick, tick.   
  
If I had the strength to lift myself to my feet I'd tear that damn clock of the wall and throw it out the window. Time would really fly then don't you think? Typical that I'm making jokes at a time like this. But it helps me deal, and besides, it was a good one don't you think? I wish I could move. Maybe I would call somebody. Maybe I would tell them to go easy on her. Maybe I would tell them...   
  
I don't know what I'd tell them. I'm still thinking of things that never really mattered. Things that made no impact on my life what so ever. If I could reach the phone I bet the 911 operator would think it was a prank call because instead of saying 'help' I'd most likely tell them about the time I was nine and crashed my bike into a tree. In a way I'm almost glad I won't be able to do that. My stomach burns like fire every time I move. A million tiny flames torching their way across my flesh. It hurts more than anything I've ever known but I can't cry out.   
  
I can't even blame her.   
  
I know she loved me. She wouldn't have denied it so much if she hadn't. She wouldn't have stayed all that time if she hadn't. My darling little physicist in training.   
  
I met her in when I first came to L.A. I was contacted to do some construction work on a new hotel they were building off of Hollywood Boulevard. It wasn't a bad gig. They were paying me a lot more money than I was used to getting at the time. I didn't know too many people in the city, and usually kept to myself. I led a quiet existence. It wasn't much to speak of, so I won't. Then one day I went to the main branch of the public library. I liked libraries for some reason. They made me feel safe in a way that I couldn't explain. The place was huge, as main branches tend to be, and I easily got lost in the endless sea of books.   
  
I was wandering through the aisles when this one book caught my attention. I picked it up and turned to the title page. The book was called "Scrqwrn." Whatever the hell that meant. I went to turn another page when the book suddenly snapped closed in my hands. I dropped it on the floor and bent to pick it up when our heads crashed together. It was something out of a bad romantic comedy. When I looked up to see whose head I had just smacked I think I said something like "Sorry about that" or "oh, excuse me." And when my eyes met hers my tongue stopped dead inside my mouth.   
  
She was the cutest thing I had ever seen in my life, short life as the case may now be. Her mass of wavy brown hair was pulled into a loose ponytail behind her head, and her glasses were perched on the end of her nose. I couldn't think of anything else to say and just stared at her. I remember that she apologized for surprising me like that, and said about a hundred other words that didn't mean anything. She told me that the book was kind of dangerous and that she was here to get rid of it. She never did say why. I didn't think anything of it at the time, but like I said, my mind is thinking of things that don't matter.   
  
I think I smiled when she didn't stop talking. I think it made her cuter to me in some way. I stood up, and reached out my hand to help her up and I remember how soft her skin seemed. I blurted out that my name was Xander when she went into this barrage of sentences about chivalry and how it wasn't dead. She stopped speaking and smiled at me.   
  
I could have married her in that second, I was so entranced.   
  
She told me her name was Winifred, but please, call her Fred. Everyone else did.   
  
I think I nodded.   
  
Our hands were still joined and I wasn't in any hurry to let go. I mentioned something about lunch, and, would she like to go with me? She looked at me with wide, frightened eyes and moved to walk away. I said that I was sorry. I didn't mean to be so abrupt. I told her that I thought she was the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen and that I knew of a great taco place a few blocks away. I must have said the magic word because she smiled this absolutely wonderful smile and said she'd love to.  
  
If I knew then what would happen. I wouldn't have changed anything.   
  
We had lunch and Paco's Tacos and our odd and bumpy relationship started from there. She really liked tacos. I mean really, really liked them. She was so small and petite and somehow managed to pack away eight of them. It was kind of charming. In an odd fetish like way. She told me that she was studying to become a physicist at UCLA, and worked at the library part time. She said she loved math, loved the structure of it, how you could always count on it. I told her I worked construction. She asked if I liked it. I said that I did. I asked her if she liked her job at the library, and after two minutes of telling me every possible detail of what exactly she liked about the work, she finally compacted her thoughts and said she enjoyed it.   
  
  
She lived in a small apartment somewhere near the Hollywood bowl, being an assistant librarian didn't pay all that well. She told me it was a nice enough place to live, and that was definitely a hard thing to come by in this city. I had to agree with her.   
  
She told me I had nice hair. Nice touchable hair. She reached across the table and ran her hands through it quickly and sat back down. She looked into her lap and fought a smile and I couldn't help one myself.   
  
Instantly, I loved her.   
  
We finished our food and she said that she had to get back to the library. I asked if I could see her again. She looked down at her feet, and I just thought she was being shy again, but I could have sworn I heard a gasp. She looked back up to me all smiled faintly and said 'sure' she'd like that. I never knew if she really meant it, but I didn't care at the time.   
  
The first thing I learned about her, besides the incessant amount of talking, was that she wasn't exactly on the level. I mean, she was fine most of the time. It's just that there were certain times, where she'd get really anxious, or nervous, or whatever and it just seemed like she was a million miles away. I tried to help her through those times, but it was the last thing she ever wanted. She'd push me away, call me stupid, say there was no possible way I could ever understand.  
  
Understand what?  
  
She never told and eventually I stopped asking.   
  
Her apartment was small, the few times I actually saw it. It was nice though, cozy. She had the biggest collection of books I'd ever seen. Outside of a bookstore or a library. She rarely ever wanted to stay at her place. It was another one of those questions I had to eventually stop asking.   
  
We were seeing each other for awhile before I ever met her parents. They were from Texas and never came to visit often, but while we were together they had come twice and I never saw them. She said she was nervous about me meeting them and didn't want to rush into anything. I didn't know what she meant by rushing, we'd been taking things really slow, we hadn't even slept together yet.   
  
After a few months she was still very nervous around me sometimes and I didn't know why. I'd move to hold her hand and she'd flinch away from me. She said that she couldn't do it, any of it. I'd ask her what she meant and she would say a hundred things that didn't many much sense before getting quiet and muttering nevermind. I'd have to pretend not to be worried about her, she hated that, and things would be all right for awhile after those little odd occurrences. Eventually they began to eat away at me.   
  
Human curiosity can be a gift and a curse. In my case it was a curse. Because after awhile I really had to know.   
  
We were in my apartment one night, I'd just recently moved here for good, and I asked why she would stray away from me at certain times. She said that she didn't want to talk about it, that she couldn't talk about it with me.   
  
I persisted.  
  
She got mad and told me that she hated me. That I could never understand, and never ever know what was wrong with her. I'm giving you the edited version of what else she said to me, because I don't have that much time left and it was so much that I can't even remember it all. She grabbed her backpack and she was about to storm out when I ran in front of her, blocking the way. I won't go into detail about what I said, partly because it was really pathetic and I think I actually go onto my knees for second.   
  
It was the day that I told her I loved her.   
  
She screamed at me and fell to the floor.   
  
It was not the reaction I was looking for.   
  
She shivered wildly and kept saying 'no, no, no' over and over again. I didn't understand. I thought that "I love you" was the cure all for anything that might have been wrong. I thought that she shied away, and kept me at a distance sometimes, because she was afraid that we were going nowhere. That I was just using her in some way because she seemed so fragile to me.   
  
It was exactly the type of self-involved egotism that she hated in people, and I was reprimanded instantly. She screamed at me until her throat was sore.   
  
"Me, me, me," she said. "That's what it's all about isn't it?"  
  
I balked and hung my head and didn't know what to say. I didn't understand why she was so strange sometimes, but I wanted too. Lord help me, I wanted nothing more. The way I felt about her went far beyond anything I'd ever bothered to feel about someone before in my life.   
  
If I knew then what was going to happen.   
  
I wouldn't have changed anything.   
  
She told me that we both knew this couldn't last forever.   
  
I asked her why.   
  
She said I could never know why.   
  
Believe me I when I said I wanted to.   
  
She said that people only existed to hurt others. That the only thing love was, was simply some kind of sick game people played to keep their lives more interesting. It was sick, she said. It was sadistic. I asked her why she ever wanted to keep seeing me after we had lunch that day. She told me that she didn't know.   
  
Oh, fidelity I claimed you.   
  
I loved her madly. I wanted to make her understand. I wrapped my arms around her and she squirmed and tried to shy away yet again, but I held firm. I said that I loved her again. I whispered it into her ear. I kissed her cheek and told her again. I kissed her forehead and said it again. She stopped trying to move away. I looked straight into those beautiful eyes of hers, and made sure that she knew I meant it.   
  
She calmed down and surrendered to my hold.   
  
Head to toe in Valium blue.   
  
She kissed me full on the lips that night.   
  
I won't tell you the rest.   
  
Somehow I'd been mislead.  
  
I woke up in the morning to an empty bed. I reached over to snuggle with her for a little while before I had to go to work. The spot next to me was empty and the sheets were cold. I got up groggily; I never was a morning person. I called her name and got no answer. Her backpack was still on my couch, she never went anywhere without that thing, and I knew she hadn't left me. I went into the kitchen and there she was, standing at my counter with her head in her hands. I stepped up behind her, wrapped my arms around her little waste, and kissed the back of her neck. I said good morning and she said nothing in return. I sighed and started to get a little frustrated that she was giving me the silent treatment again.   
  
I asked if she regretted the previous night.   
  
She said no.   
  
I asked if she wanted to leave.   
  
She said no.   
  
I asked her if she loved me.   
  
She started to cry. She told me that she wanted to, she had tried so hard to get her heart to open to me. She told me she'd been hurt before. Hurt so badly that she had just shut down for days on end. She nearly failed out of school. She'd nearly lost her job. She'd scared her parents half to death.   
  
"Where has our baby gone?" They asked her.   
  
I didn't know how to reply. I rarely ever did when it came to such things.   
  
I asked her again if she loved me.   
  
If I knew then what would have happened.   
  
I wouldn't have changed anything.   
  
She said that she was sorry. That she couldn't let herself be hurt again. Not by me, not by anyone. She went on to a long list of other reasons but the words just flew past my ears. I wanted her to love me. I wanted her to so very much. Her skin felt as cold as the tile underneath my feet when I rested my forehead on her shoulder.   
  
I think I begged her.   
  
I wanted her to stay.   
  
I would never hurt her.   
  
Couldn't she see that?  
  
I loved her, didn't that mean anything?  
  
She said it was just a word.   
  
I said it was a feeling.   
  
She said she couldn't feel anything.   
  
I called her a liar.   
  
She stabbed me in the chest with a kitchen knife.   
  
I fell to the floor on my back, gasping in pain and surprise. I tried to get back up but the pain kept me down. She cried, or at least I think she did, before plunging it into my stomach. She said that she was sorry. She said that she didn't love me. She said that she could never love anyone or anything ever again. She told me that she was broken, and that there was no way to fix her. She said she never should have gone with me to lunch that day. She said that she should have never introduced me to her parents. She ran off saying that she didn't love me again and again. She said a million other things, none of which I could hear anymore.   
  
I tried to call out to her, but she was gone. And I was left here on the kitchen floor, my mind thinking about everything and nothing all at once.   
  
I know I am dying.   
  
I'm not seeing my life flash before my eyes. I'm thinking of things that don't matter.   
  
I can see today but not tomorrow.   
  
I only wanted to be by her side.   
  
I only wanted her to love me.   
  
The seconds are pounding away.   
  
Tick, tick, tick.   
  
Time's almost up Mr. Harris.   
  
Tick, tick, tick.   
  
Was it all worth it?  
  
Tick, tick, tick.   
  
Yes it was.   
  
I should probably hate her now.   
  
I'm dying.   
  
She killed me.   
  
I love her.   
  
She stabbed me.   
  
I can't hate her.   
  
My stomach hurts.   
  
I'm cold.   
  
End. 


End file.
